


Isn't it Romantic?

by AMarguerite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Battle of Hernani, Gen, Romanticism, skull cups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Note the capital R, there. Jehan tries to emulate Lord Byron. His attempts at living a life of poetry are sadly prosaic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Isn't it Romantic?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yet_intrepid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/gifts).



To be a Romantic, thought Jehan, one must live one’s life as if it were a poem. And he could think of no better exemplar than Lord Byron. (John Keats and Thomas Chatterton came a close second, but Jehan, for all his Romantic longings for the absolute beyond this veil of shadows that was the world, was not inclined to a) contract consumption, or b) drink arsenic). So Lord Byron it was. Jehan began cultivating a head of Romantic curls as he cultivated his pot of violets, began dressing two decades out of fashion, occasionally donned faux-Oriental robes, and tried to speak in ottava rima. However, his attempts at throwing a party Lord Byron would have attended were doomed before they had begun. Jehan had gone into this endeavor with a group of enthusiastic Romantics who wanted to rent out an abbey (Byron had owned Newstead Abbey) and dress up in monk’s robes. Abbeys in France, however, were still in use by the monks. Though the revolutionary government had certainly tried its hardest to redistribute church properties, they did not have the tenacity of Henry VIII.

“This is the first time I’ve lamented the revolutionary government,” Jehan complained to Bahorel. “And then, you know, monks are not very keen on letting you rent their mausoleums for an evening.”

“How very disobliging of them,” said Bahorel, with a straight face.

Since they could not have the abbey with its shadow-filled cloisters and mute swans disturbing the reflection of the moon as they glided across the waters, their next best hope was to secure the paraphernalia, namely, a skull cup. What a delightful idea it was, what a juxtaposition of the grotesque (the skull) and the sublime (a good claret, according to Bahorel), what a source of macabre joy! Jehan was in raptures. They all dressed themselves in black, comported themselves like vampires and descended upon the Cafe Musain.

Gerard de Nerval’s father was a surgeon with a fine anatomical collection and so the skull was easily secured. It was also easily snuck into the Cafe Musain, to the alarm of the waiter.

“That’s got all sorts of miasmas clinging to that, it has,” objected the waiter.

“No it hasn’t,” cried Jehan,taking the skull-cup,  “it has all the secrets of the undiscovered country to which we all shall claim citizenship some day or other. Here we have before us the last earthly remains of a beautiful young lady—”

“—a middle-aged drum major,” corrected de Nerval, sounding sad and defeated.

Jehan was not to be deterred “— dead of consumption—”

De Nerval was miserable. “Killed at the battle of Moskowa.”

Jehan shared an unamused look with Theophile Gautier. There was no Romance in drinking in the secret thoughts of a middle-aged drum major along with the wine.

“We’ll order a bottle of claret,” said Bahorel, who was deeply amused by the whole proceeding. “I’m sure the cost of that will far outweigh any miasmas you may breathe in while serving it to us. Gerard, it appears to me that you have attached a drawer handle to this skull.”

“Fastened by a nut and screw-bolt,” said Gerard, brightening. “Look, you may handle it with ease, just like a mug.”

This was not exactly the elegant goblet Jehan had been envisioning, but he was forced to agree with Gautier that there was no other way to successfully turn a skull into a usable cup.

But, when the waiter came out and filled the skull with claret, all the while attempting to stand as far away from the skull as possible, Gerard de Nerval had some difficulty bringing himself to actually use the skull as a mug.

“Jehan, the honor should be yours,” he said, pushing the now somewhat prosaic and slightly disgusting cup at Jehan. “Your verses are more violent than mine, the drum-major may aid you in your poem on the apocalypse.”

Jehan was not very flattered by this attempt at honoring his verses. He did, however, touch his lips to the skull with well-concealed repugnance. They handed the skull around the table and none of them were very astonished to see that most of the claret still remained in the mug.

Bahorel, the most gallant of them all, decided to fall on his sword. “Ah, and I see the last is mine.” With only a slight grimace, he chugged the claret and said, after a moment, “I wonder if Byron never really used a skull and just had a very nicely painted wooden goblet instead.”

“It takes a little of the poetry out of his life,” said Gautier.

“The skull mug made from a drawer handle and the head of a middle aged drum-major has also sucked the poetry out of Byron’s life,” muttered Jehan, to Bahorel. Then louder, he said, “Waiter, bring us sea-water!”

“Why, what for?” asked Bahorel.

“Did not Hugo write that Han of Iceland drank the briny waters in the skulls of the dead?”

“Hugo also wrote that Han rode around on a polar bear. Are you also planning on ursine stables?”

“Ah Bahorel,” said Jehan, much shocked by the failure of their experiment. “But is not literature life? Can we not be Romantic in deed as well as in word? Can my life not be a poem, with each day a stanza?”

“Certainly,” replied Bahorel, “but I don’t think we have to resort to polar bears to do so. Listen, have you heard of this new play of Hugo’s,  _Hernani_?”

It was not, perhaps, a skullful of wine in a darkened abbey, but as Jehan whooped and hollered in the orchestra, waving around his chevalier hat, while surrounded by poets, artists, writers, Romantics of all sorts, dressed in every fashion but the present one, all giving in to the pure rush of their joy, and living only for their passion, for their art, for their movement, Jehan reflected that this was perhaps better. Here was the triumph of art over all, the victory of Romanticism, man’s contact, through language, to the sublime… without having to personally engage in the grotesque first.


End file.
